Imi’s Reviews > Through the Language Glass: Why The World Looks Different In Other Languages > Status Update
Imi
is 28% done
And yet the similarities among languages in the choice of foci are still far too striking to be dismissed as haphazard: the great majority of languages still behave in a highly predictable way that would be hard to explain if cultures were free to divide the colour concepts entirely at whim. This uneasy balance between conformity and divergence is particularly evident in the order in which colour names...
— Oct 18, 2021 08:46AM
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Imi’s Previous Updates
Imi
is 58% done
...all the evidence suggests that we should turn to the maxim 'freedom within constraints' as the best way to understand culture's influence on the choice of coordinate systems. Nature - in this case the physical environment - certainly places constraints on the types of coordinate system that can be used sensibly in a given language. But there is considerable freedom within these constraints...
— Oct 19, 2021 02:49AM
Imi
is 48% done
'Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.' The crucial differences between languages, in other words, are not in what each language allows its speakers to express - for in theory any language could express anything - but in what information each language obliges it speakers to express.
— Oct 19, 2021 02:46AM
Imi
is 47% done
And if you are still tempted by the theory that the inventory of ready-made concepts in our mother tongue determines the concepts we are able to understand, then just ask yourself how one would ever manage to learn any new concepts if that theory were true.
— Oct 19, 2021 02:45AM
Imi
is 37% done
The more common ground you share with your hearer, the more often you will be able merely to 'point' with your words at the participants and at the place and time of events. And the more frequently such pointing expressions are used, the more likely they are to fuse and turn to endings and other morphological elements.
— Oct 18, 2021 08:52AM
Imi
is 36% done
The degree of morphological complexity in a language is not usually a matter of conscious choice or deliberate planning by the speakers. After all, the question of how many endings there should be on verbs or nouns hardly features in party political debates. [...] the reasons must be sought in the natural and unplanned paths of change that languages tread over time.
— Oct 18, 2021 08:50AM
Imi
is 34% done
Couldn't we decide, for instance, that the complexity of a language is defined as the difficulty it poses for foreign learners? But which learners exactly? The problem is that the difficulty of learning a foreign language crucially depends on the learner's mother tongue. Swedish is a doddle - if you happen to be Norwegian [...] But neither Swedish nor Spanish is easy if your native language is English.
— Oct 18, 2021 08:48AM
Imi
is 28% done
When they asked speakers of different languages to point at the best examples of various colours, there was surprising cross cultural similarity in the choice of foci [...] They concluded that these foci were universal constants of the human race that are biologically determined and independent of culture.
— Oct 18, 2021 08:43AM
Imi
is 3% done
Culture is understood here as all human traits that are not the result of instinct - in other words, as a synonym for nurture as opposed to nature. Culture thus encompasses all aspects of our behaviour that have evolved as social conventions and are transmitted through learning from generation to generation.
— Oct 18, 2021 08:40AM
